


Altar Boys (Altered Boys)

by Rhensis



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Bomb, Death, M/M, New Years, Terrorism, idek, trust me if i knew i would tell u but i dont
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3081752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhensis/pseuds/Rhensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Altar boys, altered boys, we're the things that love destroys. You, me, us, them, we're just resurrection men, us, we were only meant to make you live again." (based partly on Zankyou No Terror & inspiration from Tokyo Ghoul)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Altar Boys (Altered Boys)

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea what this is but i like the metaphors i used so ur getting it anyway ok (also on my [tumblr](http://kaleidanscope.tumblr.com/))

A finger slides down to stain the condensation. Or, perhaps, he thinks, to remove the stain from the window. He isn’t sure which one he views the action as; he guesses that the pessimist would see it as staining, and the optimist would see it as cleaning.

He is neither of those, so he settles on simple seeing it as wiping the goddamn condensation away and scolds himself internally for trying to be poetic.

He certainly isn’t a poet. Or an artist, as evident by the simplicity of the upside down smile (or as the pessimist might say, a frown) that is formed as droplets of water collect on his fingertips. There’s a slight squeaking of the glass as his finger creates friction, and he winces at the sound but does not stop the action causing it until he is done.

When he is, the finger comes to an abrupt halt. He frowns, glancing through the clarity left by the lines of the face, and sees the red light across the street. His free hand curls tighter around his coffee.

A blink, and the light is gone. Sighing at himself, he turns back round, sitting properly in his seat and closing his eyes for just a second. The coffee is brought up to his mouth, which forms an ‘o’ shape, allowing a small tunnel of air to be blown from it and onto the beverage. It seems a little pointless to cool it when the inside of his mouth is already ragged with scar tissue and another small burn isn’t going to make a difference, but old habits die hard, he supposes. Harder than human beings, at least.

A quick glance at the clock on the wall on the other side of the room makes him click his tongue against the bridge of his mouth. Late again, of course.

Without even attempting to take a sip of his drink, he puts it down and folds his arms securely across his chest, one hand dipping underneath his coat jacket. He flicks his head to one side to move the strand of his hair away from his eyes, and sighs with contempt.

“Dan,” the owner of the voice is clearly out of breath, and just a faint hint of amusement passes through Dan as he thinks of how they must have run to get here on time and yet still failed. Serves them right, he thinks.

“Phil.” He replies, not even looking up to see the man he knows his hovering over him. He can feel the slight shadow that Phil’s created as his body blocks the light move, and sure enough, Phil emerges from the corner of his vision to right in the middle of it as he takes the seat in front of him.

“Is it ready?” Dan asks as nonchalantly as he possibly can, but there’s still a wobble in his voice, still a portrayal of weakness. That should be gone by now, he knows. It’s ridiculous that he can’t quite seem to shake off the last of it.

Phil tenses up a little in his seat, looking down at the table. Dan recognises this pose well; shoulders hunched, eyes closed just a little, slight blush creeping up cheeks. He can read Phil’s body language better than his own mind, and it’s useful for times like this.

Phil is scared of him.

Good.

A small nod disturbs the fur of Phil’s hood a little. “Yeah. But Dan, you don’t need to do this, you know that, right?”

Dan rolls his eyes. He can’t help himself, honestly. He’s explained this all to Phil once, and he doesn’t particularly want to do it again. Certainly not in a public coffee shop, where the world and its wife could be listening in if they wanted to.

He looks back towards his frown-shaped mark on the window, less prominent now as the condensation quickly words to conceal it again. He can just about still see the green light flickering beyond the window, and he doesn’t move his eyes back to Phil as he talks. “Yeah, I do. You know I do.”

“People are going to die.” It’s almost a plea, and Dan scoffs, turning back to face Phil with a raised eyebrow and a disbelieving smile.

“I’ve done everything to avoid that. If anyone does die, it won’t be my fault. It’ll be yours, if nothing else, so don’t give me that card,”

“You don’t have to risk it, you don’t need to do this,” Phil tries again, seemingly ignoring Dan’s comment. The black-haired man looks up, eyes sparkling, probably with tears, and shakes his head adamantly. “This isn’t the way, Dan. This isn’t the way. I know you’re mad, but you’re mad with me. You’re not mad with that little girl across the street that could be about to fucking die.”

The curse word spat from Phil’s mouth is rare coming from him, and Dan raises an eyebrow, slumping back in his chair.

“Collateral damage.”

“Stop it,” Phil slams a closed fist down on the table. Dan jumps, posture suddenly straightening and the hand he’d kept tucked inside his jacket gripping the cold metal that his knuckles were brushing up just moments prior.

A wave of silence passes over the coffee shop. Dan grits his teeth, eyes wandering away from Phil and towards the nearest table. A couple, two girls, sat with hands loosely entwined underneath the table and abandoned coffee mugs in front of them, now staring right at Dan and Phil.

“Fucking hell, look what you’ve done.” Dan grumbles, quietly enough that no one but Phil is able to hear him. He waits until the girls have turned away before he says anything else, his hands shaking a little. “Do you _want_ more people to die?”

“You’re not listening to me,” Phil hisses, “you won’t listen to reason, Dan. I know it was bad, I know what I did was wrong, and I know you’re hurt. I know that this isn’t you.”

“‘Isn’t you’? Jesus, this isn’t some fucking anime where I have two sides to me or something. This is me now, Phil. This is what you created. This is what _they_ created. And you’re going to help me do what I want, and you’re going to stop drawing attention to us because that’s just going to make things worse for everyone in the long run.”

Dan lets his fingers slack around the hilt hidden by his jacket. He takes the hand out and reaches it towards Phil, opening his palm expectantly.

Phil stiffens up again. Dan’s known Phil for years, and he can practically hear the internal debate that’s going on behind Phil’s eyes right now. That head of Phil’s was always so carefree, so innocent, almost. So willing to please, so desperate to be happy.

The frown that Dan drew on the window has completely crystallised over again now, and Dan thinks that’s exactly how Phil used to operate. Coat sadness with a pretty colour and make everyone else none the wiser. Clothe bad actions with good intentions and hope that no one notices. Dan broke that facade, and the brunette will admit that it’s one of his greatest achievements.

The reluctance is evident as Phil hands it over to him. A small remote, just a single button on it. Dan grins, quickly clutching it in his hand to stop Phil having second thoughts.

“See. Not that hard, right?”

Phil shakes his head, lips puckering in disgust. “I can’t believe that you let them turn you into this,”

Dan doesn’t even bother to answer. He stands up instead, knowing that Phil will follow his lead, and sure enough he does.

It’s nice, being taller than Phil. There was a time that he wasn’t, and that’s not a time that he misses. Now that he can see Phil from above, he can see all of those little things that his teenage self missed. He can see the way that Phil’s forehead is creased from worry, can see the slight thinning of his hair, can see how Phil cowers when people are able to tower over him. Dan’s grin doesn’t fade as he lifts his spare hand to rest under Phil’s chin, and he lets his fingers dance along the skin for a moment before pulling Phil up to kiss him.

It lasts three seconds, perhaps four. Just long enough for their lips to meet and Phil to let out a sigh of appreciation before Dan pulls away. It hasn’t been that long, not really, and Dan knows that it won’t be that long till the next one.

“I hate you for what you did to me.” He mumbles, so quietly that half of him doubts that Phil even hears. He can imagine that Phil feels it, that the air his words disturbs brushes against Phil’s lips in the same way that Dan’s kiss did. Phil trembles right there, and Dan almost laughs at how _stupid_ Phil is. “And I _hate_ the fact that I loved you.”

“I hate you too,” Phil whispers, and it simply makes Dan grin more.

He can remember oh so vividly the times that ‘I love you’ would melt off Phil’s lips, would drip into Dan’s ears like soothing honey and slow his brain, sticking to his synapses and turning everything off but that one sensor, that one pulsing voice in the back of his mind _screaming_ ‘I love you, I love you’ right back at Phil. Now, there’s nothing but an ‘I hate you’, and it’s like sweet chocolate in place of the honey, even more dulling and even more poignant.

“Please don’t, please,” Phil tries pleading one final time, his head falling so that he’s looking at his shoes. Dan follows the gaze, his head tilted to one side, his smile a little crooked. They’re the same blue shoes with red laces that Phil used to wear everywhere, and that Dan himself would borrow once or twice.

“I’m not doing this. You are, remember?”

Dan doesn’t let Phil reply. He quickly walks past him, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunching his shoulders over, just as Phil did earlier. Except, his reasons for doing it are far from fear. It’s more to make himself smaller, to make himself insignificant.

No one expects a terrorist to look like him. White, young, thin. He is far from the image that the media portrays of those who might attack the country, those who _do_ attack other countries, those who we need to be protected against. A little bit of prejudice does him a favour, it helps him along. No one is going to expect the nice white boy Dan Howell to be a terrorist, and that is _exactly_ what gives him the edge.

He doesn’t look behind his shoulder to make sure that Phil’s following. It doesn’t truly matter; Phil will come back to him no matter what anyway. Phil, oh, little innocent Phil. The Phil that ratted him out has become an obedient puppy of late, a kind of puppet with a mouthpiece that Dan can control using cords of string that are thicker than his own arm. Phil has a noose around his neck, and Dan is the one holding the other end.

There’s a step when he exits the café, and he almost trips down it. The sudden jolt that goes through his stomach forces out a laugh. It’s a giggle, trapped inside a bubble of innocent that simply doesn’t sound right to him anymore. He traps it away the second he can, and runs his tongue across the inside of his mouth, the scars and the more recent wounds stinging him enough to stop the laughter.

“Fucking moron,” he says to himself, shaking his head and taking out the control in his pocket. He steps away from the café door.

His other hand takes the phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. It takes him seconds to find the familiar red icon, and he taps it, and then taps a couple more times, finding the video that he wants. He smiles, and one final tap makes the video private.

With a quiet hum, he goes back to his channel at looks at it with a grin. After messing with his headphones for just a moment, he plugs them in and the small click emitted as he does is almost exhilarating. Headphones in both ears, he taps the latest thumbnail, admiring the fact that even with the mask on, he managed to catch quite a good angle of himself.

"Hello internet!” He hears his own voice begin, sounding uncharacteristically and inappropriately enthusiastic, “If you manage to go for ten minutes without screaming when the bomb goes off, then you get ten days respite from the next one. Hope you enjoy the show!"

When he looks up away from his phone he allows himself for the first time to take note of the tree in front of him. He tilts his head, pulling the wire for his left headphone taut, and grins as he examines the re-awakening red light. Phil did his job well, he thinks. Turning off the ominous glow of the red star atop the tree to let him know that it was done, timer ticking on it lighting again. All he has to do is press the button.

His voice fades out of his ears as his demands are finished, and the smile fades a little. His eyes dart from left to right, checking that the close proximity is cleared out just enough to do harm, to cause injury, but not to kill. No, he won’t stoop down to their level. Not purposefully, at least.

“Dan, stop.” The voice surprises him, he’ll admit. The cutting edge of it is dulled by his headphones, turning harsh words into a distant plea, and he can’t help himself but roll his eyes at it. This is getting _ridiculous_ -

“It’s too _late_ ,” Dan almost snaps, losing his composure a little. He doesn’t even bother to look at his ex-boyfriend (did they ever formally break it off? Dan doesn’t remember when he started attaching the prefix to Phil’s title).

“Just _kill me_ , if that’s what it’s going to take to stop you.” Dan rolls his eyes again at the rather pitiful martyr act. Honestly, it’s making him feel a little queasy. “I know, I know I fucking handed you in, I thought that they’d help you, I thought that you’d get better.”

“Got what you wanted then, right?” Dan says with a huff, taking out his headphones and wrapping them tightly around his phone. His fingers are pale against the darkness of the screen, and he tries to occupy his mind with thinking about how strange it is that almost any colour can be projected from the screen beneath his pressed-down fingertips, but there’s Phil _again_ , always trying to drag him back to humanity.

“I don’t know what they did to you. I know that you can’t sleep at night, though. And I know that you’re only doing this because you’re mad at them,”

“Mad at them?” Dan asks, throwing his head back with a laugh. The dimple on his cheek pops, and his eyes crinkle in a way that makes Phil’s stomach crumple a little. Ridiculous, Dan thinks. This whole thing is _ridiculous_. “Mad at the whole goddamn world is more like it, Phil. Especially you. And that’s why I’m not going to kill you.”

Before Phil can even answer him, he has the remote dangling right in front of Phil’s eyes. Phil startles, eyes widening like a scared rabbit’s, a hand dashing out to grab it away from Dan. Dan manages to keep it out of his reach, and Phil’s hand grabs at empty air instead, his hand closing around nothing.

“I’ll hand you in again if I have to.” Phil says desperately, voice cracking. Dan stops, his hand still hanging in midair, almost in a comical way. He looks as if he was someone in a cartoon that’s been suspended in time, he thinks. His eyes move, flicking over to look at the Christmas tree.

He’s glad they didn’t take it down before tonight. He finds it strange, but he’s not complaining. It serves his purposes and also a dash of irony, and he enjoys irony perhaps a little more than he should do.

Still, it isn’t exactly seasonal anymore, not on New Year’s Eve. So, he added a few of his own extra little treats. The idea makes the corners of his lips twitch up for just a second, before he remembers Phil.

The black-haired man is still attractive to him, but that’s about as far as it goes in terms of recall of his affection for him. He _knows_ that he loved Phil once. He knows it, and in fact, he can just about remember it. And he’s tried, tried many times, to reignite that, but God knows all he manages to ignite is fire. Flames, burning him right from the inside of his lungs, licking up the walls of his alveoli and spreading smoke through his bronchioles, boiling the blood of his arteries and setting off a switch in the back of his skull that reminds him of all his countermeasures.

Because if there is one thing he is sure of, he is _not_ going back.

“Go on then,” he says, almost as a whisper. Fighting back the smile, he looks up, trying to widen his eyes as much as he can. “Stop me. Stop me, Phil. Here.”

The remote lands in Phil’s hand, and it’s light flicking a light switch on. Phil himself lights up, his smile wide and his eyes bright, if a tad disbelieving. It’s running through his mind right now, Dan knows, that he’s managed to win. That perhaps he’s getting a sliver of his Dan Howell back, perhaps he might be making his way back into Dan’s mind.

As if he ever left.

Acid creeps up the back of Dan’s trachea. The smile that he’d been repressing begins to surface the second that Phil has his back to him as he starts to walk away. He walks, and then he runs, running as if half-scared that Dan’s put a secret timer on it, as if he’s half scared that if he doesn’t get there in time, it’s going to be too late anyway. Dan can’t blame him for his suspicion. Suspicion is something that Dan bred into him, something that he nurtured and watched blossom. Suspicion has been the only thing keeping Phil Lester alive.

And yet, he doesn’t seem to have enough of it, even now. Dan slips his fingers into his jacket and fishes around for a moment, fingers brushing across the metal blade.

The second remote is almost identical to the first. There’s no hesitation in pulling it out, in getting it in his hand ready. His eyes don’t even move away from where they’re resting, watching Phil, fixated on the black jacket that Dan gave him. Sentimental bastard.

He glances up at the clock towering over the city. Still a few hours until midnight. Still, his show will probably be better than the rest of the world’s fireworks put together.

He presses the button.

The world lights up. Someone screams, already breaking the terms of his agreement, and he stands there, stands there and grins at the sound. Because it’s not _somebody_ , it’s not just a stranger.

In fact, it’s Phil. A last shriek, a last cry of pain before a leg goes flying. A leg, an arm, probably half a torso. Some of him is probably incinerated. The bomb threaded within the jacket was small but effective, and the fireworks do their damage too. It’ll leave enough for an identity, he expects. It’ll leave enough for the entire world to know that Phil Lester was a suicide bomber.

The second bang has his neck snapping up to face the sky. As a kid, he was terrified of fireworks. He’d run, frightened at night, and bury himself right underneath his duvet, hiding away from the world. The fireworks, in hindsight, were always just an excuse. An excuse to run, and excuse to hide. An excuse not to face anything in his life that he was meant to, because he was _weak_ , he was a _coward_.

And now, here he is. Having set _everything_ on fire.


End file.
